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“Fighting stopped about 200,000 people from evacuating the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol for a second day in a row on Sunday, as Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed to press ahead with his invasion unless Kyiv surrendered… The invasion has drawn widespread condemnation around the world, sent more than 1.5 million Ukrainians fleeing from the country, and triggered sweeping Western sanctions against Russia aimed at crippling its economy.” Reuters
Many on both sides urge additional material support for Ukraine:
“The Biden administration has been wise to reject a NATO no-fly zone over Ukraine, even though one of the people who has called for it is Ukraine’s redoubtable president, Volodymyr Zelensky. There would be no way to enforce such a measure without large-scale deployment of U.S. and other NATO aircraft, and their engagement in direct combat with Russian forces. This would dramatically escalate the war in pursuit of relatively marginal benefits: most of the damage being done to Ukraine right now is from ground-launched artillery and missiles, not from high-explosive weapons delivered by Russian aircraft. Indeed, Ukraine has already had some success shooting down helicopters and planes with its own arms, including mobile antiaircraft missiles supplied by NATO…
“A better plan would be to continue that vital flow of weaponry while enabling Poland to send its available Soviet-vintage fighter aircraft to Ukraine for use by the latter country’s own pilots. The United States would have to offset Poland’s transfers to Ukraine by supplying new U.S.-made planes. Secretary of State Antony Blinken confirmed Sunday that the Biden administration would support this three-way exchange.”
Editorial Board, Washington Post
“In the Korean War, American pilots reported hearing ‘North Korean’ MiG-15 pilots speaking Russian. The suspicion that the Soviets not only supplied aircraft but the pilots to the North Koreans was later confirmed. Yet this did not result in a broader conflict with Russia, or the USSR, at the time…
“A couple decades later, the USSR supplied Egypt and Syria with massive quantities not just of defensive weapons, such as SAM batteries, but also offensive weapons, such as fighter jets, which both Arab countries used in their wars against Israel. As in Korea, Soviet pilots actually flew the aircraft in many cases. Yet this did not draw the USSR into direct conflict with Israel. Russian president Vladimir Putin might be reminded of this history, should he threaten escalation over any such provision of aircraft.”
John Ullyot and Thomas D. Grant, National Review
A military perspective
Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Philip Breedlove writes, “Ukrainians are holding their own on the ground; it’s air assistance they need most. Their army has much improved since 2014, but the navy and air force still have challenges. America is finally providing Stinger surface-to-air missiles; NATO has been for some time, but they’re made for low-altitude air defense. Get them systems giving them medium- and high-altitude defense capabilities… Ukrainians also know how to fly the Soviet-made MiG-29s that Eastern European nations have offered for transfer. This would be a concrete and much-needed addition to their capabilities…
“Every day we see the growing human disaster of Russia’s criminal attack. NATO should establish a humanitarian no-fly zone immediately to protect corridors to provide food, medical supplies and other humanitarian relief to Ukraine’s beleaguered civilians. If constructed carefully, this does not have to be an act of war: Cover western Ukraine, stopping at Kyiv, and go no farther east to avoid conflicts with Russian forces… Sanctions have and certainly will hurt the Kremlin and the Russian people, but they have not changed Putin’s behavior. The West needs to move to active deterrence to change Putin’s calculus.”
Philip Breedlove and Iulia Sabina-Joja, New York Post
“Do they really expect us to believe Putin will cancel the war because one of his cronies lost an expensive toy? More to the point, do the authorities believe it themselves?… Not a single idea advanced by the West, from bank sanctions to sending Ukraine some defense weapons to seizing the yachts of Russian oligarchs, has one chance in a thousand of stopping Putin’s war machine…
“The efforts may prolong the fighting but won’t change the outcome. Because both Europe and the United States are addicted to Russian oil, the sanctions steered clear of Mad Vlad’s energy business, a compromise that guts the ostensible aim of making it too painful for him to continue. In effect, those calling for an end to the war are also financing its continuation.”
Michael Goodwin, New York Post
At the same time, “It is now clear that the Russian military lacks the troop capacity, combined arms coordination, logistics trains, and morale to sustain a high-tempo war throughout Ukraine. But the more Russian units that are taken off the battlefield, the more limited the means of Russian commanders to pursue their objectives. This will exacerbate tension with higher commanders back in Belarus and Russia who are under pressure from Putin to deliver results. This is to say nothing of the impact on morale for those soldiers who will now be ordered to follow their fallen comrades into what they will assume are prospectively doomed battles…
“Putin is not going to be able to keep arguing, as he did on Thursday, that his operation is ‘going to plan.’ As the body count mounts and the obvious failure to make strategic progress becomes clearer, Putin will face escalating protests. The harsh response of Russian police forces against the limited protests that have occurred thus far underlines the Kremlin's fear in this regard. At a strategic level, the present dynamic will force Putin to choose massive escalation via artillery and missile supplies (stocks of the most capable missiles being limited in number) or compromise.”
Tom Rogan, Washington Examiner
“As civilian casualties mount in Ukraine, the Biden Administration is facing increasing pressure to support a ban on U.S. energy imports from Russia… Prices at the pump already top four dollars a gallon in some states, and Joe Biden’s approval rating stands at just forty-two per cent, according to the RealClearPolitics poll average, so it’s easy to see why the prospect of another rise in prices would alarm some people in the White House…
“The ultimate risk is that a further rise in inflation, and inflation expectations, will prompt the Fed to raise interest rates more rapidly than it is currently planning to do, and inadvertently plunge the economy into a recession… In short, the question of whether to ban Russian oil imports has placed the White House in an unenviable position.”
John Cassidy, New Yorker
Some argue, “We know from U.S. wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan that withdrawals often come about due to a combination of stiff resistance from the occupied population and a strong anti-war movement that succeeds in keeping a costly war at the forefront of domestic debate. Americans may be less familiar with the catastrophic Soviet intervention in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989… That invasion involved over half a million Soviet troops, many conscripted. Some of its survivors surely must empathize with the young men forced into the conflict today…
“Family members of conscript soldiers, too, are a key demographic for resisting the war from within Russia, much like the grieving American mothers whose children were sent off to die in Iraq and Afghanistan… There is little evidence the U.S. sanctions which target ordinary people in Russia (and many, many other nations) do much other than giving the regime a scapegoat for economic troubles and a pretext for cracking down on domestic opposition. Punishing working-class Russians for their government's actions will not help Ukrainians, but it might undermine popular movements that could develop the capacity to force Putin to withdraw.”
Saoirse Gowan, The Week
